


It's A Wonderful Life

by WhumpTown



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aaron Hotchner Whump, Autistic Jack Hotchner, Autistic Spencer Reid, Car Accidents, Gen, Happy Aaron Hotchner, Head Injury, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Minor Haley Hotchner/Aaron Hotchner, Past Aaron Hotchner/Haley Hotchner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29526948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: A dangerous car wreck puts Hotch in a tricky situation-- to stay or to go?
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & David Rossi, Aaron Hotchner & Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner & Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner & Jack Hotchner, Aaron Hotchner & Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid, Aaron Hotchner/Haley Hotchner, Penelope Garcia & Aaron Hotchner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the only Christmas movie that I like and last night’s episode of Prodigal Son

Aaron Hotchner wakes to the sound of his bedroom door slowly groaning, the old hinge creaking as it’s opened. If he hadn’t heard the faint, pattering footsteps beforehand, he might be fearful of what kind of intruders were trying to make their way into his home. However, before he can even roll to the edge of the mattress and offer his little burglar a hand up he’s being whacked in the face by a stuffed bear. Only able to grunt a complaint as a little fist grip tightly onto his pajama bottoms and-- “Hey, buddy.”

Jack looks nearly surprised to find his father staring back at him.

“You’re up early.”

Jack smiles, shyly leaning forward until he’s half laid across Hotch’s chest and half-buried down in the comforter. Placing one hand on Jack’s back, he leans up to see his alarm-clock. They’ve still got thirty minutes before the alarm goes off and the day must go on. Regardless, he sinks back into the pillows under him. Even if there’s no way he can go back to sleep, he can enjoy some pre-school-sized cuddles.

Thirty minutes is up too fast.

Carrying a squirming, unhappy five-year-old against his side he yawns and makes his way to the kitchen. “Oatmeal?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. Oatmeal is the only thing that Jack will eat. It’s a… comfort food. The therapist, not the family one they go to but the one that specializes in autism, said that oatmeal was one of Jack’s comfort foods.

There was a bit of a debate about if Hotch should try to introduce additional foods with the oatmeal and now they’re working by trial. Oatmeal doesn’t meet too many dietary needs and having Jack fall underweight and little for his age was just another blow to Hotch. He understands that he can’t take these things personally-- Jack being nonverbal isn’t anyone’s fault. Jack being autistic is not some cosmic payback. It’s just a thing. Something that the two of them are working with.

It was just so much easier with Haley here too.

He’s a little cranky now but today is a good morning and Hotch isn’t going to ruin it by trying to encourage Jack into eating apples. He’ll cut up a few pieces of banana for Jack to either eat or ignore and be content when Jack eats his oatmeal and finishes his orange juice and that’s plenty. That’s good.

“Ugh.” This is the part Hotch struggles with. Speaking. For the language center of Jack’s brain to develop properly, Hotch has to speak more than he does. Silence is far more natural for him and he’d like to think the same for Jack. Speaking all the time, saying everything is tiring and he hates it. The thing is, he and Jack work exceptionally well sans spoken words. Jack’s ability to communicate is exceptional, Hotch has to work for it, but he’s five and Hotch doesn’t know any five-year-olds that are flawless at communication.

“Ah, thank you,” he signs the words too. His sign language isn’t actually that good but, again, they make it work. “Can you go to the chart and--” Hotch smiles, Jack already running over to the poster on his wall. Smiling as he pulls the velcro pieces off and puts the little drawing of a toothbrush and hairbrush over to the done side. “Thank you, Jack. You’re doing so good this morning. How about socks and shoes now?”

Jack gets to pick his socks out.

Reid’s idea.

Hotch had been very hesitant to ask Reid for any help. To acknowledge the one thing that they never talk about. In the face of everything that happened with Foyet and then with Haley he’d been left with no other choices. Strangely enough, Reid is the only person that has never made Hotch feel like an awful father for not knowing what to do.

Jack… kind of hates Reid, though.

“Oh, nice!” Reid says that Hotch should encourage the things that Jack likes. So, every morning he works a little harder to be happy when Jack picks out two completely different socks and turns around to search for his approval. “Do you know what color this one is?” Hotch asks.

Jack sits down on the floor, wiggling contently as he waits for Hotch to slip his socks on.

“Jack,” Hotch encourages, jostling Jack’s thigh to get his attention. “What color is it?” He holds the sock patently in his palm watching Jack get momentarily agitated. He raises his hand, ready to sign the word himself but Jack beats him to it. Clicking his tongue as he smiles and pats his lip with his middle finger.

The sign calls for the signer to form the letter “p” and then to tap or flick their middle finger against their lip but who cares about that?

“Good job!” Hotch praises and it’s so easy to be happy. Jack’s so fucking smart and he’s already so excited to tell someone. Jessica or Dave or whoever he sees first. “Pink! Your sock is pink!” The other has dinosaurs on it, it’s a favorite and Hotch finds himself washing it and its pair at least twice a week. He thinks it might have more to do with the soft yellow coloring of the sock.

Jack’s favorite color is yellow.

“You wanna go play with your rocks?” Hotch asks, slipping his hands under Jack’s arms and righting him on his feet. “I’m going to go get dressed, okay?” He waits, making sure Jack is going to go drag his tubs of rocks out before going off on his way. He can worry about limiting the number of rocks Jack takes with them later.

It’s Wednesday which means that he has to take Jack to the office for two hours until his program opens for the day. Technically, he should be in Kindergarten but Garcia found this program for him. He and Reid had gone to scope the place out. Hotch was way in over his head back then (and still is but then he’d been trying to cope with Haley’s death and getting Jack into school).

Though most of the things that the program had to offer were things he couldn’t understand Reid has taken it in. Explaining every little detail until Hotch understood not only the style of learning they were enforcing but why Jack had loved their foam furniture so much.

Hotch doesn’t know how he would have gotten through the last few years without the team.

With everything that happened with Foyet, he’s surprised that they can stand him at all. Maybe they shouldn’t. Their ability and drive to stay no matter what he did is commendable and he’s lucky to have a group of people that care about him but he has to consider why.

Why did they stay?

Morgan got a promotion, recently. With a short, strongly worded letter Morgan could have control of the whole department and he should have it. No one would think twice about snatching it up out of his hands.

He watched Reid struggle with addiction. Has hidden and protected Reid’s autism diagnoses from being filed on his record. His right hand, the woman he trusts more than any other agent, is a chronic insubordinate mess. For whom he has stepped on many toes. Despite his retirement and the push to fill the position in other ways, Hotch asked Rossi to come out of retirement. No one liked that idea but he did it anyway. There’s his decision to bring Garcia on despite her record, which had caused a lot of trouble.

JJ-- Well, she’s perfect so she’s probably the one they can’t use against him.

But how many times had Haley called JJ? Before the divorce and after. Even if they can’t use JJ against him, she probably hates him.

His life is a good and proper mess.

And now he has to go convince his son not to bring two pockets full of rocks with them.

He has to hike his dress pants up to squat down. If he brings himself down to Jack’s level it’s supposed to be more efficient for communication. That’s understandable. He’s certainly not going to stand over Jack. Jack’s hardly three feet tall, it can be a little overwhelming. Not to mention that’s over three feet of distance between them.

“Buddy,” he holds Jack’s hands in his own. “Buddy, you can take two.”

Two. Jack can count. Two just doesn’t sound like a bargain.

“Four,” Hotch caves. “Two for each pocket.”

Okay, he can live with that.

Jack hates his car seat but holding two rocks in each hand seems to soothe him enough to allow Hotch the chance to strap him into his seat. That and his sketchers hitting the seat’s bottom lights the whole car up in flashing blues and yellows.

Hotch glances back at him a few times. Sometimes Jack tries to put the rocks in his mouth. He’s never swallowed one, he just likes the cold way the rock feels in his mouth but if he does that while Hotch is driving it’s easy to understand how that might not end well.

He gets to an intersection in town, frustrated when he catches the redlight. “There’s no way this stoplight hasn’t ruined someone’s day before,” Hotch mumbles to himself. The thing gets stuck on red for an absurd amount of time. The lights are regulated, a fact Reid reminds him of all the time, but this one will stay on red for longer than two minutes. By the fourth minute, all patience is thrown out the window.

When the light turns green he glances back at Jack through the mirror, smirking. He looks back to the road still smiling. Jack is content, clicking his tongue, and watching the world pass by through his window. It’s like he can breathe-- he can stop for just this moment and know he’s doing something right.

He doesn’t see the other car racing across the intersection, blind with rage. There’s the horrible ripping of metal and the hiss of smoke and then nothing.

Turns out he was right.

That stoplight is going to ruin someone’s day.


	2. Chapter 2

“Aaron!”

He’s flat on his back, a rickety old ceiling fan wobbling above him. The base sways back and forth as the blades turn. That has to be a hazard...

Two cold hands press to his cheeks, blonde strands of hair falling into his face. “Aaron,” his name comes out more urgently from her mouth. Those cold fingers tapping at his cheek, trying to rouse some sort of reaction out of him. He can’t. Can’t think of what to say. He just looks up at her. _**Haley**_. “Baby--”

He coughs, weakly craning his neck as the pain of his fall registers throughout the rest of his body. “Ah!” rolling onto his side, pulling his knees up, he groans at the sharp stabs of pain up his back. He clenches his jaw, a moment of sheer panic blinding him as he fails to recover from the feeling of having the wind knocked out of him. Unable to draw air into his shocked lungs.

Haley leans over him, moving to compensate for his pained struggle. Her fingers probe along the back of his head wincing in sympathy when she finds blood and he whimpers, weakly pulling from her touch. “What were you doing?” she asks, smoothing down the hair on the back of his neck. Trying to offer some comfort.

He can’t remember anything before the fan. 

“Maybe--” she smiles down at him but he can see she’s just trying to look assured. His head is turned into her palm, Aaron having slowly curled into her. Trying to compress himself, needing to feel that she’s really here. “Maybe you should go to the hospital? You’re bleeding--”

He aims to shake his head but ends up grunting, blinded by the pain that mistake shoots up the base of his neck. “No,” he whispers, trembling hand coming up to blindly touch her. She catches his hand, folding his fingers within her own and pressing them down. Holding him still. “No,” he manages, a little more assured. “I’m--I’m okay.” 

Blinking, a cold sweat breaking out across his face he shifts a numb arm underneath him. Biting down to keep himself from making a sound as he eases him up. Attempting to sit up quickly dispels what he thought was a fact for fiction. His eyes roll back, white cold pain eating up his skin. 

“Aaron,” she calls frantically. 

The color of his naturally pale cheeks drains and sways for a moment, the color drained from his body. “I’m-- I’m--” he squeezes his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to calm. He’s taken far worse hits than this. This is nothing. Fingernails digging sharp pain into his palms is grounding and slowly he opens his eyes and the living doesn’t spin. Everything is still, if not hazy.

“I’m okay,” he breathes.

_**I’m okay.** _

_**smoke burns his nose, his vision too poor to see past the steering wheel, past the spiderwebbed glass right in front of him** _

_**crying, strained screaming-- he can’t tell where the sound is coming from** _

_**his chest aches, stomach twisting with each pitched, nearly choked inhale of--** _

_**Jack.** _

_**Jack is screaming, little feet kicking hard and solidly as his chair** _

_**he has to get to--** _

“Aaron?”

He’s looking down at the carpet, confused but… It’s gone. The vision, his vision, is swimming dangerously and he weakly manages to place a hand on the carpet beneath him. Leaning onto it, as he tries to ground himself. “Sorry,” he rasps, swallowing down the fear that itches at the back of his throat. “Sorry, I just…” he went somewhere else. He’s not sure what happened but something feels incredibly wrong about this, about here. 

Haley’s hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades, gently rubbing. “Let me make you some tea,” she offers. 

Tea. No one can make tea like Haley. “Yeah,” he agrees. Just thinking about it calms him. “Please?” 

She nods, pressing a kiss to his temple. As she steps around him she pulls a blanket off the couch, settling it over his shoulders. “Stay here,” she asks, brushing the back of her hand across his cheek. “I don’t want you to fall again.” He can feel her hesitancy, she doesn’t want to leave him by himself. 

He doesn’t get up, he’s not even sure his legs will hold him, but he does manage to scoot himself across the carpet until he can lean against the couch behind him. The cushions are old, they give easily against him but he loves this old couch. Haley’s parents had given it to them when they moved away. It had been his bed many a night in their tiny hometown. This old couch has cured many of his ailments.

It sat in the spare room of Haley’s childhood home. An off to the side, usually shut room full of old but loved things from Haley and Jessica’s childhood. Including the beat-to-hell sofa her parents didn’t have the heart to throw out-- plus they’re southern and the couch wasn’t falling apart so it still had a use.

Every night he crawled home to them, he’d find himself lovingly tucked in on it. 

He finds himself nodding off, head leaning into the sunken cushions. The whistle of the kettle startling him slightly. It makes his pulse jump, vision swimming. “Haley?”

_**sirens** _

_**a hand, padded by thick gloves wrap around the base of his neck** _

_**“easy, just hold still. you’re okay”** _

_**he glances as far as he can to his left, out the door to asphalt** _

_**he can see Jack, his happy little hands, rocking back and forth on his feet** _

_**“J…” his tongue heavy, body sinking** _

_**“stay with me”** _

“Aaron?” Haley’s squatting down over him, her cold hands cupping his head. “Baby, you’re scaring me.”

He’s scaring himself. 

She slides down next to him, throwing her legs over his so she can sit close. “Are you sure we shouldn’t go to the hospital?” Pulling the edges of the blanket back around him, she frowns when he leans against her. Tiredly just deflating until he’s limply laying with his head under her chin. 

“I’m okay,” he whispers. His head is really starting to hurt. “I just… I think I need to lay down.”

Haley looks unconvinced but caves, nodding her. “Please let me help you?”

He’s not sure he can do it otherwise. 

His feet drag on the carpet, nearly unable to lift them to move properly. There’s this chill he can’t fight, leaving him shaking as Haley holds them welded together. The bed, impossibly soft, as he sinks down is cold with their absence. He goes limply down, not fighting Haley as she tucks the thick comforter around him. 

She crawls in after him.

He finally relaxes. The comfort of familiarity soothing his nerves. Haley’s arm over his chest, head on his shoulder is just as things should be. Closing his eyes, he lets sleep consume him. He needs it so badly. He can’t get warm, squirming, and trying to curl into himself to get some sort of warmth. No matter how hard he tries, he just can’t rest. 

He turns over searching the nightstand for a clock but there are none. He frowns, sitting up. Tossing the blanket off his legs he gets up. Unable to see the time, he needs to go figure it out. He has to make oatmeal, get the day going. His every day revolves around a strictly held schedule. A maybe concussion doesn’t warrant straying from that. 

“What are you doing?”

“I was looking for--” _**Jack**_. Aaron realizes where he is. He feels sick. There is no Jack. Not yet. This fantasy of his has no Jack. He swallows thickly and turns back around, shaking his head. He goes back to the bed. “Most have been dreaming,” he whispers, fighting to keep his emotions from getting the best of him.

He can’t remember having Jack. This boy, a whole child that he can visualize, is nothing more than a concept. They have no children. 

He can’t sleep after that.

\-----

“Let’s got out.”

He wakes, startles, alone in bed. Painful goosebumps have raised over his skin, shivering he squints up at her. She’s in the same clothes as yesterday, a fast that strikes him as odd. He can’t remember her changing her clothes yesterday either before they’d gone to bed. Yet, her hair is clean and swept back into a low ponytail. She looks happy. 

“Out?” he asks. Sitting up, he self-consciously runs his hand through his hair. Taming what he knows is a rat’s nest. “Out-- Out where?” He tries so hard to rub the sleep from his eyes, aware of the fact that he’s gotten just enough sleep to wear him down more. Pulling himself out from under the sheets he glares down at his own body, he’s dressed too. They’d gone to bed in their clothes…

She sits down on the edge with him, taking his left hand. “For coffee,” she says with a smile. “You know that little bookshop just downtown? They put in a coffee bar! It’ll be fun. Come on, we can get a coffee and search the shelves. I know you finished the last one you got.” She smiles assuredly, rubbing at his arm but she’s so cold that she does nothing to abate his shivering.

“Coffee,” he repeats. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, coffee sounds good.” 

His stomach aches as they go. Twisted and acidic, he feels like he’s going to be sick but it’s not nausea. Disenfrantiszement. Like he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be.

“The normal?” Haley asks as they step into the shop. He nods, regardless of not being able to conjure up what his “normal” is. She lets go of his hand and he drifts, ghosting across the old, dust-caked carpet. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he’s just guided by the undertoned scent of the old books. 

The crime section-- novels covered in deeps seas of black highlighted to catch the eye with the harrowing shifts to crimson-- is where he finds himself. Deja vu. Ted Bundy. Ed Gein. He knows these men far more intimately than he feels the novels he briefly skims through do. He slides one of the books back, grimacing at the tone. The baroque, vulgarity of it unsettling him. Some people just don’t have any business dealing with sensitive things like this. 

He hovers over a copy of a book--

FBI Novelist David Rossi

The words are crimson, meant to catch your eyes. 

He looks over his shoulder, stomach twisting like he’s afraid to be caught doing something he’d convinced maybe he shouldn’t be doing. He opens the first page, swallowing thickly at the dedication. To the footnote for the author Agent Rossi and his untimely demise-- 

Haley appears to his left, smiling when she sees him. “Whatcha got?” 

He takes the coffee she offers out to him-- he glares at the cup but doesn’t comment. He can’t feel the warmth that should be pouring out of it. “Uhm…” he shows her the back. To the picture of the agent, unsure of how to ask what’s on his mind. Hotch turns the book over in his hand, an immense pressure building in his chest. Anxiety making him jittery. “I-- I thought… I thought he was--” he looks to Haley, mouth parted as he fails to draw these connections that he knows, intuitively, that he should have the knowledge to understand.

Haley turns the book, manipulating his hold to face the book to her so she can really see what it is that he’d got. “Oh God,” she whispers, sadly. “Don’t you remember that bombing?” She shakes her head, “it killed all those agents. You were furious, I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

But, suddenly, he does. It’s such a graphic memory that it feels more like… it feels fake with its intensity. He knows, though. His face hot, knees anxiously drumming as he sat precariously on the edge of the couch. Watching on hesitant, nervous breathes as the news spread steady, if not a bit misleading information on a bombing. He’d seen them. Sat there all day watching them add people’s names to a growing list of the dead.

“It’s written by that David Rossi guy,” Haley says. “You’d probably like it.”

He nods, dejectedly opening the cover. The book is dedicated to Rossi, a small note thanking him for his service to the country and his insights with the FBI. He thumbs through it a little more, nearly morbidly curious for what he might find. Scanning the words, waiting for something to strike him. 

He nearly drops it, unable to breathe as he takes in something he can’t imagine. 

_**In the months after the bombing, I reached out to the remaining members of the elite Behavior Analysis Unit (Behavioural Science when I founded it some nearly thirty years earlier with my now deceased ex-partner Jason Gideon). Derek Morgan, now the only profiler left of Jason’s team, was hesitant to continue any prolonged contact with me. I suspected his reliance having to do with the perseverance of Jason’s memory. After Agent Spencer Reid’s suicide, only a matter of weeks after the bombing, any contact I had with Agent Morgan ended. The Bureau has no comment on what lead the young genius to suicide.** _

“Oh,” Haley whispers sadly. “That’s so sad.”

He can’t breathe.

“Do you think he had PTSD?”

He roughly pushes the book back where he found it. His left hand coming to rub at his head.

“Aaron?”

That’s not how that ends. That’s not how any of that happened. 

The day that Jason Gidone made that call in Boston Aaron been standing right beside him. Reid had been sent back to a local precinct with busywork to calm down. He was a new recruit and, rightfully, had no business even being in the field with them let alone in a situation like that. It had been him, his decision to pull Reid. 

He remembers the feeling of the heat hitting his body. 

The shrapnel wounds impeding his ability to stand so he’d dragged himself ten feet to safety where he’d passed out. Having no memory of what happened a week later and years after the fact he still can’t actually tell you what happened other than to repeat back what he’s been told. 

“Let’s go home,” Haley slips her hand into his. 

He nods, eyes unfocused as he follows blankly where she guides him. Chest tight, hands trembling weakly he realizes this must be some fucked joke. Revenge? A test? He’s done. He doesn’t want to play this game anymore. It’s tantalizing and demeaning and so overwhelming. Is this within his control and if it is can he stop? 

He wants to stay here with Haley. 

“What--What about--” he’s worked himself into such a state that he’s shaking. Unable to speak properly as finds himself desperately asking, “what about kids?” 

Haley winces, shaking her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want any.”

No Jack. 

“I think,” his voice is rasped whisper. “I think I need to lie down.”

Haley’s face falls, “ok. I’ll come with you.”

She holds his hand, whispering soft questions but he’s… gone. Hardly there at all, unable to even focus on the worried tone of her words. Asking if his head hurts or if he’d like some tea or something to eat. He just needs to lay down and eventually, she gives up and lets him. 

Somberly, she lays down beside him. The bed sinks with her weight but she already feels too far away.

He can feel the weight of his chest deepening, each inhales a little shorter. “Haley,” he calls, hand searching blindly across their bedsheet for her. He finds her, skin chilled, but there. “I’m sorry.” Though she curls around him, wrapping an arm up around his back and pressing their hips close-- her contact does not abate his shivering. She can not comfort him.

“You have nothing to apologize for, darling.”


	3. Chapter 3

There’s smoke hissing its ascension to the sky. Thick and black near the hood of the car but as it goes up he finds he can’t track it much further than a few feet. It wisps off, sweltering to nothing. The world has sunken into this pitter-patter of noises. The soft tink, tink, tink of cooling metal and engines filling the air.

Letting his eyes slide shut, Aaron falls. 

_**Haley.** _

_**a cold hand brushes down his cheek** _

_**she looks down at him, her kind smile** _

_**she says something to him… he loses it** _

He blinks his eyes open, blood-caked to the corners. It’s sticky, thickly hardening all over his face. He can taste it on his tongue, down the back of his throat. Which aches from the smoke burning his airway. He coughs hard, jostling his sore body, and for a moment he finds himself hovering. Unable to breathe in as his body tenses. His vision dancing black dots as the pain threatens to pull him back under.

Gasping he wraps his right arm around his torso, crying out when his trembling fingers hit raw, split skin. He closes his eyes, trying to force himself to calm down. Breathe. He just needs to breathe and the rest will come along. Though it hurts to expand his chest and his throat tries to close around itself he forces steady breaths.

Holding it in each lungful… and releasing it as slowly as he can. Steady. 

Something rustles behind him and he remembers Jack-- if his heart is racing, fear nearly overcoming every tactical and first-aide training rule he’s ever been taught then Jack has to be terrified. It hits him, that the severity of his own wounds can not be the priority. No matter what happens has to stay awake. Has to be present so that someone can explain to Jack what’s going on. So that he gets out of here. 

“Jack?” The crack of his own voice startles him and he knows Jack doesn’t like it either. Jack whimpers softly behind Hotch, kicking his little foot out in protest. Great, he thinks, solid one, Aaron. Rasping and slurring his son’s name is not the best way to connect. He clears his throat, needing a moment to recover as he puts all of his energy into steadying himself. To sound confident, of a sound body. “Buddy? You okay?”

He’s not sure what exactly it is that he’s expecting. There’s no way Jack’s going to use sign language, he doesn’t even know the sign for okay and if he did Hotch wouldn’t be able to see it. 

The realization of what he has to do… is too much. 

He pulls in a shaking breath, frustrated with himself. He can feel himself slipping, losing his facilities. The strain produces sharp pain in his chest but he ignores it. Forcing his right hand off of his side he tries to wipe the blood off of it, rubbing his palm into his dress pants. Then, despite how deeply his chest aches, he forces his arm back. Slipping it back until he comes in contact with one of those light-up sketchers.

Jack giggles and taps his foot against Hotch’s fingers. 

To think he’d thought those shoes were impractical… 

He winces, holding his breath as a wave of intense pain spreads across his chest. A stabbing pain that leaves him lightheaded. “Jack…” he tries to lift his head. To force himself to stay awake but with a muffled grunt his eyes roll into the back of his head. Body limply leaning to the right. 

_**aaron?** _

_**haley draws lazy patterns into his bare hip, smiling at him** _

_**he opens his mouth-- a question on the tip of his tongue** _

_**she smiles and leans close, silencing him with a gentle kiss** _

_**her fingers slip up the back of his head** _

_**“stay here,” she whispers, “just a moment longer”** _

_**self-preservation has never been his finest skill** _

The windshield is a spiderwebbed mess.

This isn’t the first time that he has been trapped between a steering wheel and a splintering windshield. His history with Bureau lent SUV’s and using them like federal grade battering rams is well known-- something either gets him a little heat or a strangely approving nod.

Through the windshield, he sees an accumulation of red. Not the splatter of his blood on the glass but the cars. A firetruck pulling up just feet away with a mighty puff of exertion and the great low hum of the engine.

His ears, never having healed properly after the bombing in New York, a ring with a sharp ache. Crying, strained borderline screaming shakes the car. His chest aches with the intensity of it. Stomach twisting sickly with each miserably, pitched, nearly choked inhale. 

Jack.

Jack is kicking at his hand, blindly lost to isolation. Unable to communicate, probably overstimulated. Everything just keeps so loud and Hotch can’t stand that he can’t do anything to help. He doesn’t have anything, actually. Not those ear muffs Garcia spent so long researching, that muffle out all the sound. They’d had a bit of trouble trying to find the right size. 

He-- He always about the things that Jack needs. Extra socks and pants and one of those knit hats that he likes to wear regardless of the season. Hotch thinks he likes to feel the pressure against his ears. Jack likes to crawl into his lap and place one of Hotch’s hands over each of his ears. He feels immense understanding for his son in these moments. Rocking back and forth and making the happiest little noises... 

He needs to do something. Find it within himself to get out. He can calm Jack down, he just needs to get back there. 

All he manages is a choked inhale, Jack’s poor little sobs breaking as makes himself breathless. Gagging, weakly trying to spit the copper taste in his mouth, Hotch chokes on the thick warm blood sliding down his throat. 

_**“you’re scaring me, aaron.”** _

_**he looks at her…** _

_**trying to make every detail of her face a permanent fixture in his mind** _

_**the blonde hair that he was so glad that Jack got** _

_**better that he look like her** _

_**Haley is everything sweet; the only good thing he ever had** _

_**and Jack is so much like her  
gentle and loving** _

_**“aaron?”** _

_**he leans into her touch, “I’m okay”** _

“Hey, hey, hey.” Two hands brace both sides of his neck, at the base. Hands padded by thick gloves. “Brown-eyed boy!” the other man greets. “How’s your head feeling, big fella?”

Hotch opens his mouth, lips twisting into a pained grimace as he grunts. Pale, half-lidded eyes rolling back. Writhes, sucking in small rasped breathes.

“Easy,” the man soothes. Hotch is moving too much, jostling his spine dangerously. Given the state of his side-- flesh torn open by his door having caved in. The whole thing buckling in. Carl, the man currently using his own hands to hold Hotch’s neck, is providing as a brace, a point guard. He sits wedged right there with him, ready to help the guys on the other side. 

“Just hold still,” Carl whispers. “You’re okay.”

Having George Foyet stand overtop him, the blade of his knife dragging down his flesh. Taunting, playing… he’d known then what was coming. Expected the blinding pain and known that no matter what he did, no matter what he felt he could not show fear. Could not submit to showing his pain. 

Here, the vague chill of numbness spreading down his toes. Knowing that he can’t feel his feet, that he isn’t moving them either. Nothing-- not the prospect of dying here in this car-- is as harrowing as the realization that he can’t see or hear Jack. 

He swallows thickly, draining his body of its resources as he struggles to bring himself to full consciousness. His lips part but he hasn’t got enough air. 

“Alright, alright.” Carl tries to keep him calm but he sees the blood. Watching the blood bubble, foamy and pale as it slides down Aaron’s chin. “Don’t speak,” he rushes. Carl leans his head out the car’s window, shouting down to the other worker’s slowly working out how to get the door open. “He’s got busted lung guys, you’re gonna have to be quicker.”

“How bad?”

Carl looks back to Aaron, wincing in sympathy. “Just hurry, he’s not going to be able to take much more of this.”

“J,,,” Aaron can’t breathe. Each breath a little thinner, the taste of blood heavy on his tongue. “Jack,” he mouths, voice catching on just enough of the sounds that Carl understands.

The other man nods, smiling as he motions with his head to their left. “Jack? Is that your boy’s name?” Carl laughs, easy, light. “He’s sitting out there with my partner. Kid’s got so many rocks in his pockets, I don’t know if we’ll be able to pick the poor fella up.”

Hotch looks as far to the left as he can. Eyes burning with the strain. He can see out the door, vision blurring just enough to obscure the asphalt. To Jack. His happy little hands dancing up at his head as he rocks back on forth on his feet. Unaware of the wreckage just behind him.

Shutting his eyes he smiles too. For Jack and his little clicks, above all else, he just wants to hear those little clicks. 

“Stay with me, pal. We promised Jack you’d be alright. Come on--”

But Aaron knows that’s not true. He’s worked these scenes a thousand times. Knows what to say to the children when they ask too many questions-- _“Where’s mommy?” “Is my daddy gonna die?”_ \-- and how far to move them from the scene. How to point out clouds shaped like castles so that they don’t hear the pained cries of their mothers. Drawing their attention to the grasshopper in the tall grass so that when the EMTs shout with fear, their fathers bleeding out on the asphalt with nothing but rough gravel beneath them… they never suspect a thing.

This day, this moment will be remembered by the person who took the time to talk to them. Who sat with them in the grass. Not the blood. 

Jack will not ask where his father is. 

And Aaron finds a great bit of relief knowing Jack won’t be lied to.


	4. Chapter 4

Haley and Hotch were not the kind of couple that managed to get pregnant on accident. They tried for years, long before law school graduations, years with the district attorney, the academy, Seattle… Hotch was worming his way into a nice cozy profiling job when Haley got their first positive test. Dave was still around back then and he’d been overjoyed-- tripping over his own excitement at just the opportunity to see so much emotion out of his prodigy.

Two months later Dave was sleeping on the couch, the future ex-Mrs. Rossi in their bed, when he got the call. He’ll never forget how quickly Aaron worked to compartmentalize everything happening. Dave could hear him softly sniffling, rubbing at his face as he took back slip-ups. Brushing away any comfort Dave might try to provide. Considering the loss he just suffered as nothing-- not a baby, not even cells. Just a stupid, silly idea.

Haley stopped trying to getting him to grieve with her.

They stopped trying after that. 

It’s entirely an accident. A slap to the face to the years they spent with their lives measured out on calenders, going to doctors, and throwing money at her uterus and his sperm to magically make them physically compatible. They had both grown desperate but in opposing ways. 

He could not rest. Spent the nights tossing and turning. 

Haley needed a child, wanted one with all her might. To love it and teach it all the best parts of the world. She wanted to see how something good and kind could come from the two of them. She held him close and imagined a child with his annoying curiosity and her stubborn streak. Of coming to greet him at the door and squint her eyes and inform him of the mischief **_his_** child has been into. So that he might spend hours telling that baby silly stories, catching them up way past bedtime having fallen asleep to his nth retelling of how they fell in love.

The announcement could not have come at a better time.

Haley had been at home when Jason Gideon made the call in Boston that would nearly kill her husband. She hadn’t felt it, no cosmic hand wrapping tightly around her heart to tell her that the other half of her soul, the only person she’s ever loved was in mortal peril. It had been Derek Morgan, standing numbly in an isolated hospital wing, watching her husband’s body be shocked back to life, having air forced into his lungs that had been her telling moment.

And there she was with the child she thought she might never have and a dying husband. 

She put an expiration date on both their heads and waited. Prepared to bury her husband and lose the only part of him she has the ability to protect. But the days crawled by and she found herself listening to that little baby’s heartbeat, the same slow pace as Aaron’s. Neither died. 

But Jack’s birth could only hold off Aaron’s inability to self-preserve minimally. He’d live to see his son’s birth and Haley was certain he’d get himself killed before Jack’s fifth birthday. 

Jack’s developmental delays were a point of much dispute, having a lot to do with Hotch’s denial. Hotch had been the smallest in his class, in his age bracket until ninth grade-- spent years as skinny as a rail and not meeting healthy markers for children his age. Haley had, mercifully, bitten her tongue and hadn’t reminded him that why Jack is small and missing delays have nothing to do with why Hotch had. Jack isn’t being abused at home… he’s just autistic.

Their marriage, no matter how strongly they still loved each other, was going down the drain. The news of all this had been a cross of startling and... about as hard to miss as the broad side of a barn.

“Two is-- Two is a good age to get diagnosed.” Reid, like Emily and Morgan, mistook Hotch’s primary concern. Saw his disappointment, his unease and pinned it on Jack’s diagnosis. The autism. And Hotch had smiled, calmly allowing Reid a moment’s tangent to get out what he needs to say. To try and convince Hotch that autism isn’t the end of the world-- because Reid can’t handle it. If Hotch leaves, if Hotch disowns his own son-- the way Reid’s own father had not long after his own “off the books” diagnosis had been given-- he’s not sure he can handle that. 

“Reid,” Hotch had softly, placed his hand on Reid’s arm. The faintest touch. “I love Jack. I’m-- I’m not the best father but…” He won’t leave. The autism he can handle, Jack’s always been Jack and that changes nothing but finally provides some answers. Some guidance where’d they had been left blind.

It felt like Hotch was never going to be given a second chance to prove himself wrong. They seemed to turn around and there George Foyet was. Knife in one hand leaving behind a zombified Hotch and Jack. They watched, unable to do anything to help. Jack wanted Hotch and only Hotch but it was like just seeing the boy physically hurt Hotch.

“He’s late.”

They all look forward to Wednesdays. The two hours that they have to just sit and relax-- to let Jack entertain them with his many interest and love for random things he finds on their desks to play with. So they don’t take too kindly to Hotch coming in late and stealing their Jack time. 

Emily glances at the clock at the bottom of her computer screen and shakes her head. Her stomach sinks as she realizes that they’re not just _**late**_ , they’re nearly forty-five minutes late. Hotch abides by a strict, self-imposed schedule one made of utmost importance by Jack’s own intermingled schedule. She rolls her eyes, though, at Morgan rather than admit that it scares her just a little. 

“It’s been raining,” JJ reminds them confidently. “I’m sure they’re out catching frogs in the parking lot or looking for washed-up rocks.”

Frogs. Right, Jack loves frogs. He hates to hold them but thoroughly enjoys chasing them and watching his father squirm and fight to hold them. It is pretty funny though, Aaron Hotchner scrambling to keep a tiny frog in one of his hands. Ending up slightly mud-stained, disheveled all to wrangle a frog. 

It’s… _**humanizing**_ (cute but she wouldn’t be caught dead calling the likes of dumbass Aaron Hotchner “cute”).

Morgan yawns, stretching out his arms high above his head. “I’m sure we have nothing to worry about,” he shrugs, tampering off the end of his yawn with the back of his hand. It’s far more likely that they’re getting breakfast-- the two of them love muffins. It wouldn’t be the first time that Hotch has stopped to get breakfast. If that goes in their favor, he’ll probably bring them some too. That’s not to say they’re not walking down the hall right now, Hotch trying to be as patient as possible as Jack hops down the hall. 

Besides, if there was anything to worry about Dave would have gotten a call. If not for the simplicity of one of Hotch’s stories-- some long-winded, exasperated thing about Jack weighing down his pockets with rocks, Jack having a bad morning and he’s not going to be in for a few more minutes because he had to clean oatmeal off of himself and kitchen floor. Then, at the very least, something.

Yet, they have only radio silence.

Which is good. 

Probably.

“Any word from Monsieur Crabbyass this fine morning?”

David Rossi has always been fascinated with the relationship between Emily and everyone else on the team-- though his typical enterest is in the utter insubordination that occurs so effortlessly and flawlessly between Hotch and Emily. Naturally, it’s on his mind. He can’t consider the week complete until they’ve both stormed into his office to whine about the other. It makes him reconsider why came back.

It’s for that fact that he knows this is going to crush her the most. 

Morgan and Hotch go about like a match to a candle wick. Burning one another to the ground. Things between them don’t go unsaid. If there’s an issue they get to it and neither can walk away until their hands are clear.

JJ and Hotch make the perfect parental tag team. So much of what they do is hidden but the thoughtless, mechanical way the two work together is never taken for granted. If shit hits the fan, those two are who you want. 

Garcia and Hotch may not get a lot of time but they know she’s his soft spot. 

Reid and Hotch are the strangest carbon copy of one another venturing to having a little too much in common to nothing at all.

Emily and Hotch have far too much left unsaid. Tension and, what he believes, to be penance for the courses of action they have both taken. In her inability to trust the team, running from them and forcing Hotch to kill her to protect her. His distance from them, which she has always read as distrust and tinged with his ego. Neither are as simple as they prefer to pretend to perceive themselves to be.

Not as mysterious either.

Leaving him, standing on the catwalk watching her little joke hit the others with fond laughter. _**Monsieur Crabbyass**_. That’s a good one and Aaron is probably never going to hear it. Never clench his jaw and glare to the side, forcing himself not to react and admit that it’s actually kind of funny.

Dave watches over them for another moment, taking in their innocence. Emily still snickering at her own joke, Garcia and JJ both shaking their heads at her. Morgan shakes his head but there’s no hiding his own amused smirk. 

“He’s not coming in.” Dave clears his throat, “there was an accident on the way here this morning.” He can’t even get out what he needs to say, they’re already trying to talk over him. “Jack alright,” he’s standing there, trying to get his piece out. “Jessica’s already made her way to the hospital, sitting with Jack. He’s hardly got a scratch.”

There’s general ease that settles them with the relief that Jack is fine. 

“And Hotch?”

On life support. 

Laying in the intensive care unit with defibrillator sticky pads on his chest, waiting for the next episode of tachycardia to have the nurses and doctors of the unit holding their breath. Wondering just how many more times his body can take them beating the shit out of it or if he’ll come back this time. How many more times can he toe that line before he can’t come back?

“I--” Derek is standing numbly at his desk. Arms limp at his side. “What are-- Is Jack-- Jack is alright? How? Can we-- Will they let us back-- back to see him? They have to let us back to see him, right?”

To see what?

That his body is laid out on a stretcher bare of blankets and pillows. Neck held still by a brace. Jaw titled back and pale, cracked lips stretched around an incubation tube. The hiss of which fills the small empty room. To see that he’s covered in crisp white bandages, wrapped delicately around the purple bruises up and down his ribs. His unstable, flail chest. 

To see the x-rays? 

To have a doctor stand and explain the damage, the history of Aaron Hotchner’s bones. Old cracks and improperly healed aches. By forty, it’s easy to assume that the ghosts of childhood have long since lost their grasp, but today they nearly cost him his life. A decade worth of cheap shots to his sides, his father’s angry tyrannical downpours wore down the bones. 

When he hit the steering wheel, those old bones never stood a chance. They gave out on him.

And what of Jack?

It’s one thing to have those words written out _**“In the event of my death…”**_ but those are just words to be said. Never meant to be used. Jessica doesn’t understand all of Jack’s charts. She won’t ask him what color his socks are and let him weigh his pants down with rocks and carry him when he gets tired. She won’t get muddy and slimy to chase down frogs. But Jack and everything he owns (aside from some silly knick-knacks and stupid things he thought better to go to Morgan or maybe Garcia) go to Jessica Brooks.

_**In the event of my death…** _

“If he’s still alive by the time that we get there… it’s unlikely that they let anyone aside from family back.”

They stand in the silence of that. Of the implication. Does a single one of them know how to do any of this without him? Morgan doesn’t want to be fucking Unit Cheif. He got his taste, he’s done. And, the most surprising part is that the somber, truth omission of what they are all thinking comes from Emily Prentiss. Righting her shoulders like she’s standing in front of the nurses and defending them right now. 

“But we are his family.”


	5. Chapter 5

Fluorescent white is harsh. 

The ones in the police station when his mother tried to run away the first time had irritated his eyes. Laying on his back, head cushioned by a deputy’s winter jacket, he’d gotten the idea to save himself from this mess. He spent the night on that station floor, while his mother pleaded for something to be done, staring long and hard at the lights. Waiting until he couldn’t stand the pain from his eyes being open for so long before blinking. He’d hoped to blind himself, aimed for it in the hopes that he would earn a fraction of goodwill from his father. 

He didn’t need to be told that he and his mother would be going back to that house tonight.

Three months later, his father put him in the hospital for the first time. Despite the pressure across his chest, the pain of each breathe, he’d shivered harshly. Those blinding lights and white walls sucking the warmth from the room-- but maybe it had nothing to do with the hospital and the realization, at eight, that his father would rather see him dead than deal with him. 

But for two hours, Aaron remembered what it was like to have a father. More crisp than the pain stabbing through his body, the chest tube wedged into his thin chest was his father’s commanding figure. The way his mother had moved to place herself between them until she saw his true motive. 

He remembers his father soothing his out-of-mind whimpers, brushing his bangs from his face with a gentle knuckle. Gently, a nurse moving wires and keeping them from being tangled, his father had cradled him to his chest. “Easy. You’re okay now, baby.” It had been so hard to breathe, despite the oxygen canal under his nose. But he’d fallen asleep there with his father’s large flannel pulled over him like a blanket. 

At least that hospital stay earned him a month of reprieve-- he’d been on blood thinners, inhalers, and way too much medicine for a child. His father couldn’t beat him, though, because he might not have been any use to the man but a funeral is more expensive than just leaving him be.

In his ninth-grade year, his father hit him so hard that a blood vessel burst in his eye. The light had been red. The nurse who put three stitches into his chin whispered a soft chide at him for fighting boys at school but there was something about her that still makes him think she knew. She let him sleep for four hours, fed him as many sandwiches as he could stand, and sent him home with jello stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. 

There were fluorescent lights in the coroner’s office. The first time he’d ever seen a dead body-- his own father. 

From there the lights lose meaning. 

Getting mugged in college and cracking two ribs getting the shit kicked out of him when they realized he had no money. Breaking the metacarpals in his right hand punching somebody’s too drunk boyfriend-- he only remembers the blinding pain and a boy and Haley dragging him to the hospital a day later. Breaking more ribs in the academy falling off an obstacle, they called him brittle bones for the rest of training and they were right. Getting shot, too many times to count there. Being knocked unconscious, strangled, and beaten. Being blown up not once, not twice, but now three times. And… Foyet. 

It seems as if he’ll never get a reprieve from their harsh downpour. Maybe he never will. 

“I can’t let you all back there.” A doctor and a nurse meet them at the doors of the intensive care unit, the only thing separating them sitting numbly in the waiting room from Hotch. He’s already so close, they can feel it stirring something foreign in them. Maybe it’s the sort of raw thing that Hotch normally abates in them, soothes and calms long before they can truly feel it. 

Dave leads them into the hospital. 

Garcia clutches Morgan’s hand, following close on his heels, and trying to keep her eyes on the floor. Afraid that if she looks up she might start sobbing and she knows if she does start crying, she will not stop. Morgan lets her, he needs something else to focus on. Her cold hand squeezing his painfully tight works numbers.

JJ tries to speak with Reid and Emily but neither even attempts to try with a response. 

“The best I can do is… five minutes, in pairs.”

Emily looks up from the floor, showing her own first signs of life. “I’ll go.” She goes alone. 

JJ with go with Reid. Morgan with Garcia. Privileged with power of attorney, Rossi will get to stay. She tries not to think too hard about how that was once her. Before she ruined everything with Doyle, she was his power of attorney. Now Dave has to decide if he’s got enough fight left in him to keep going.

There’s blood all over his face. It’s caked under his nose and left to coagulate along his hairline. There’s so much it makes her stomach twist and she feels tears slip down her face despite the control she wishes to exude. 

Emily sniffles, wiping the back of her hand under her nose hard. Unable to forgive herself for this blatant demonstration of emotion and unwilling to stop for just a moment and really think about what is happening. About the things that have happened today while she was fucking off at her desk. “Can we--” she clears her throat harshly. Forcing her shoulder’s back and stealing her voice she tries again. “Do you have a rag? I’d like to get the blood off his face.”

A nurse, standing right at the door in case Emily does get overwhelmed, nods. She’d expected to have to hold the women or offer some sort of false promise in a hopeful prognosis but the brunette agent just turns her back and regards her friend a little closer.

She’d seen him after Foyet. _**Seen**_ him. Drugged out of his mind and numbly, nearly dissociated, from the nurses changing his bandages. It had hurt to see him so… he couldn’t even be there, mentally, to stand it. 

“Here you go,” the nurse comes back. “Don’t touch the stitches and be careful--”

“I know.” She does, really, know what the nurse is going to say. She’s cleaned her own wounds and some of the others. She knows what to do. The important thing, right now, is cleaning him up so that the others don’t see it. The blood up and down him, he’s covered in it. It’s safer, better if they see him like he’s Hotch. 

She’s hesitant to actually touch him but her time is dwindling down. Wiping at his eyebrow, she tries to think of something to say. Mindless. “Reid swears that there is some proven bullshit study--” the washcloth trembles in her hand. “I don’t know, I--I didn’t listen to him, to be honest.” An admission that would earn her a stern frown if… if he were here. But he’s not. “I think he’s just bluffing,” she admits. “I also don’t think if you had a choice, you’d want to listen to any of the sappy crap any of those nuts have to say.”

She didn’t want to, she didn’t even want to see him, but no one was moving and no one was speaking. So, she’d taken the doctor’s bait and agreed to go back first. Someone has to, it’s not a big deal. They look after one another-- she and Hotch hate each other’s guts most of the time but she always has his back. She always looks after him. Now is no exception.

The blood comes off and her time runs out.

“W--Wait!” She forces herself to take his hand, cold and rough, in her own. “Aaron,” his name feels wrong in her mouth but she’d been _**Emily**_ for ages and it’s desperate but she’s terrified she’ll never have another chance. “Don’t you die, you son of a bitch. Please don’t die.”

Her legs carry her out of the building, only half-aware of the words Dave is communicating. They can come back in the morning (but she remembers what the doctor said about him surviving the night) and that Jack is staying overnight just to be sure. 

Right. “Okay.” She’ll be back in the morning. 

On a night not quite unlike this one, JJ had taken Emily home. To the home that she and Will were still renovating and whose walls were never truly silenced no matter the hours-- night or day. It had been exactly what Emily needed to get the hell away from all that overwhelming silence. 

Will made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tipsy from her wine Emily commended his skill. Obviously, JJ was doing something here, picking him, and Henry really lucked out. That was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich she’s ever had (he sent her home the next morning with three more and even refrigerated they were amazing).

That night, JJ took Emily back to her closet and showed her the secret wardrobe-- full of clothes she’s stealthily stolen from their friends over the years. A soft green sweater that still smelled like Gideon, JJ informs her he pulled it over her head one chilly morning when they were in DC. They laughed sadly together, remembering Gideon’s very unique approach to affection. He never really hit his mark, did he? He was an odd one alright.

The real stash is in the back. Not the outrageous amounts of sweaters Garcia sends her home with-- always an excuse to go get new ones. It’s for the Morgan and Hotch memorabilia. It’s no secret the two of them will fork over anything you ask for-- fries, a pickle, an extra shirt, mittens, their coats. No, the hard part is giving those material items back.

_**“Jesus,” Emily hisses, looking at her friend with wide eyes. “And those are all from Hotch?” JJ had opened a shoebox full of gloves ranging in color and thickness.** _

_**JJ looks nearly ashamed as she nods. “He’s always leaving them everywhere!” she defends. Most do come from her finding them in random places he’s set them down and just walked away. One pair did come directly from his jacket pockets. He’d draped his peacoat over her like a blanket and she’d dug around for a piece of the hard candy he always keeps on his person and found them.** _

_**He used to lose so many pairs JJ used to wonder if Haley even bothered to get angry with him. She was frustrated and she didn’t have to go buy his big dumb butt a new pair.** _

_**“What’s your excuse for the shirts?”** _

The rule of shirts is you ask Morgan. Reid is a size small in t-shirts and when they already steal Hotch’s candy, scarves, and gloves they leave him his shirts… unless he offers first. Morgan always has one large, at least, in his bag. He is a medium but sometimes he just has to style a slightly larger shirt. 

And JJ has an impressive amount of men’s mediums shirts-- the black, blues and one green shirt are all Morgan. The white ones are Hotch.

Emily had borrowed one of JJ’s Morgan shirts and slept on the couch. She’d laid awake just a little after they’d all gone their separate ways thinking about the impossibility that she’ll ever have JJ’s problem. They just don’t like her like that.

Tonight, Emily is dipping into her own reserve. 

When she was ready to go into Witsec, Hotch gave her his button-down. Her own wouldn’t fit because of all the layers of gauze. She’d been the point of tears with aggravation over this and startled when he gently closed his hands over her own. She can loosely remember crying into his shoulder, shaking with fear. She was afraid, not mad at her stupid t-shirt. 

She was terrified she’d never seen any of them again and he’d felt the same.

_**“Haley hand-made Jack this bear out of some of my old shirts,” he tells her. It feels like he’s taken a hot serrated blade and drug it from hip-to-hip, barring himself for her to see. “He sleeps with it every night.” He leaves out the obvious-- that she’d been afraid he’d die and Jack would forget him and that he now he wishes he’d done the same with her old shirts.** _

_**Emily startles when he moves to undo the buttons on her shirt but she lets him. Watching as he tugs his own off his shoulders. The two making eye-contact as he hesitantly guides her arms into his larger shirt. It’s stupidly large but doesn’t hurt to sit across her stomach.** _

_**“Thank you,” she whispers.** _

_**He shakes his head, lowers his gaze, and moves back.** _

For the months she was away, she could understand why Jack would cling to that bear. When that old shirt stopped smelling like him she locked herself in the tiny bathroom of her apartment, sat in her bathtub with her knees drawn to her chest. Was that her last tie to them? They’re slipping out of her grip, gone. Is that what she felt like to them too? A ghost.

That old shirt made it through a lot and two weeks after she came home she brought it back to him. The worn fabric clutched in both her hands.

 _ **“I can give you another if you’d like.”**_

He gave her three more and, as it turns out, he has so many. It’s a problem. After so many washes the fabric is too thin or Jack stained it with some food or dirt or any number of things. 

Now she has an obscene amount and, if she leaves them long enough, they make the back of her closet smell like Hotch. So, despite how ridiculous it must make her, she sits in the back of her closet and buries her face in one of those old shirts. 

Why can’t just one year go by with no life-or-death experiences?

“-- I heard David Bowe,” Garcia says to seemingly no one but he knows she’s speaking to him. Of course, she’d hold on when everyone else knows it’s time to give up. “Heroes,” she sighs, shaking her head. “I hope you can hear us, Hotch. Please come home.” Her thumb worries with the back of his hand, rubbing his knuckles. “I really miss you and--” her voice cracks. 

That’s a stupid thing to say, she realizes. She saw him yesterday! They talked about the cafeteria running out of blueberry muffins and she’d apologized because she hadn’t thought to grab him one. But today she brought him one to the office. Thought it would make his Wednesday even better. 

Guess not.

“It’s okay.” Morgan pulls her to his side, rubbing her back. He just looks at Hotch. Bruised up and down, exposed to them from the waist up. Morgan could fill in what he assumed Hotch’s scars looked like but now he knows. He doesn’t even know what to say. 

Garcia presses a kiss to his forehead, a hot tear sliding down her face as she regards him for one more moment. A bitter smile twisted onto his lips as she spots his elusive white eyelash. Emily hates that thing. “I love you, Hotch.”

Morgan… takes his hand. Rubbing his thumb up Hotch’s knuckles. “Don’t leave,” he whispers, glancing at Garcia. Glad that she at least pretends not to hear. “I don’t want your job, Aaron. I don’t want to learn it. I don’t want the fucking paperwork or the--” his cracks and he pulls in a shuddering breath. Laughing at the tears that sting his eyes. “I won’t do it, do you hear me? So… come back, okay? Get better because you have to.” 

There aren’t any other options. 

Despite the childhood he endured, Aaron has only ever met one caseworker. He did go to college with a few who would eventually get there but, for the most part, he stayed the hell away from everyone in the psych department. The very last thing he needed was getting near those trigger-happy morons less he walks away slapped with a new label. And with them, it’s impossible to tell what that might be. 

He does know one thing-- if profilers ride the line then caseworkers are like g-strings right up the asscrack. No offense, both annoy him. He works with profilers, they’re the worst. Most days he wavers into hating those bastards. Caseworkers… another example of people whose entire job it is to get into people’s lives and see the dirty stuff. 

His entire life, all he’s learned to do is hide the dirty stuff. 

It’s hard to be exposed. 

So, maybe he should have befriended a caseworker or two. All that dirt, all that shit piles up until it’s hard to tell any of it apart. He can’t tell if he’s even real anymore-- sometimes he spends so much time trying to be normal that he can’t remember how to be Aaron. Old favorites feel like nothing. Books with words that once held him together at the broken, singed pieces of himself now are numb. Meaningless. 

Just like him.

Leaving behind him, in his nothingness. Covered in scars and ugly. 

Ruined.

“Agent Hotchner! I need you to calm down.”

Those fucking lights. He hates fluorescent lightbulbs.

“We have a machine breathing for you,” the doctor explains calmly. He flashes a penlight in both of his patient’s eyes. “Your lungs are healing. We’re going to put you back under, okay? Your team, Agent Rossi, is right outside. Your son Jack is safe. Get some rest Agent Hotchner, you’ve got a hard night ahead of you.”

Fuck. He’d just wanted them to turn the lights off. His vision hazes over and he fights once more against the obstruction in his throat before the world sinks into the inky black once again.


End file.
